How hard is it really to set up and maintain a bioactive enclosure for a ball python and is it worth it?
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It depends on if you decide to add plants.
A bioactive enclosure that just has a cleanup crew (isopods & springtails) would do fine.
If you do decide to go for plants you would need to find plants that do well with a heavy bodied snake, otherwise the plants would be crushed and suffocated by the snake, they also need to be able to tolerate 50-60% humidity and 86°F temp max.
The whole bioactive cycle would greatly benefit from adding plants so good beginner options would be Pothos or Snake plants.
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What would happen if snake had mites or some illness? Would it need to be torn down and done all over?
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Yup it would
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Yes unfortunately as the mites can hide in any tiny crevice they can find. If they are ill with a transmissible disease then the enclosure will also have to be taken down and redone, if its just a small illness that isn’t contagious (like a RI) or its an injury your animal can be put in a quarantine enclosure so your bioactive setup can be saved.
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Dang that sounds like a pain. Maybe its a thing i can do in the future.
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I think that’s a good idea! 
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While the advice from the others has been good, I am going to expound some on what has been said here, speaking as someone with more than a few (very large) naturalistic cages
How hard it is depends on how hard you make it and how involved you chose to be after it is done. A bioactive cage is a lot more than just throwing dirt and plants and CUC in and calling it done. You need to consider a bunch of different factors:
- The soil type and composition
- Drainage (or lack thereof)
- Maintaining moisture/humidity levels
- Growth rate of the plants and how you will contain them
- Lighting (are the lights the right type to allow for maintained plant growth?)
- Heating and potential fire dangers (concentrated heat plus live plants = dead/dry leaves = tinder)
- Etc., etc., etc., …
I will also slightly disagree that you absolutely must tear down if you get mites. It is definitely the easiest way to deal with them, but there are other, more complicated, means to solve that issue
I bring these points up not say bioactive is an impossibility, but it takes a LOT of work and forethought and care so it should not be undertaken lightly
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“Bioactive”, for housing an animal that tolerates periodic spot cleaning and full substrate changes, is very hard to make a legitimate ‘worth it’ case for (unless you sell “bioactive” materials, and then it can help put your kids through college). Processing waste in situ isn’t sensible except for some herps that simply don’t tolerate cleaning (dart frogs, for example). The whole isopod thing is overall environmentally and largely legally questionable, too, so best to avoid that when possible.
Naturalistic elements in an enclosure have a lot to be said for them in many situations, since herps seem to prefer natural materials, and they help with humidity, and they are often have more “enrichment” qualities. This can be as simple as using some natural hides (cork, for example) instead of plastic, and using some plants in pots (a pathos in the corner, rambling around the enclosure) – you can try different things and see what works for you and your situation and your animal. Keep in mind that these naturalistic elements are often less space-conservative than fake stuff like plastic hides, so a naturalistic enclosure will often need to be larger to keep the same amount of usable space for the animal.
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This is a factor that many people don’t take into account. Rubber ducky isopods are extremely popular in the hobby…but illegal in my area. Regardless of the species it’s usually recommended to freeze the substrate before disposal as well because of the possibility of other isopods becoming invasive. I don’t think the average keeper would follow that and simply just toss it as yard waste or throw it in the yard.
@t_h_wyman brings up so many good points.
The bioactive enclosures for species like dart frogs or created geckos work because the bioload of the animals is easy enough to turn over and add a bit of fertilizer to the system. It’s almost less work caring for the animal because you’ll be doing more work maintaining the plants and their parameters.
A ball python is still a huge bioload. Large piles of waste and urates that still needs to be cleaned up quickly because the bioactive will help aid mold or bacteria growth. Even just ‘pee’ can be an issue because they can release so much in a single dump. There would still be a lot of spot cleaning as well as the bioactive maintenance needed.
The bioactive substrate with a small cleanup crew is definitely a better option but will still need some routine turning and such because it would need to be deep enough to maintain humidity.
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Rubber ducky isopods are in fact illegal for all hobby keepers everywhere in the US, just to clarify. They were not legally imported into the US and are not issued USDA permits, since they’re not IDed to species (and even if they were, they’re not naturalized here so won’t be issued permits for that reason). There’s a bit of hobby disinformation that they’re legally subsumed under Cubaris marina, but USDA has informed me that this is false.
In the dart frog hobby, we’re starting to realize the critical importance of regular (daily, weekly) substrate flushing in controlling the proliferation of direct-life-cycle pathogens such as Rhabdias and Strongyloides. (Even routine flushing might be inadequate to reduce opportunistic pathogens in particularly susceptible species – Phyllobates terribilis, and whatever skin rot microorganisms they’re prone to, for example – and so there are some keepers who are doing more invasive cleaning with those species.) This sort of flushing really wouldn’t be practical with the sorts of herps and the sorts of “bioactive” substrates that are getting more common in this sort of enclosure.
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Wow, thanks for the information. I didn’t know all of this. I heard that with balls they are bigger bodied so many plants get crushed but i didn’t realize the stuff about the uriates
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